Carnival of the Liberals #72

Ladies and Gentlemen, step right up. There's no height requirement to get on these rides, but they're going to be long and bouncy. This isn't just any old carnival, it's a blog carnival, and a liberal one at that. And being smack dab in the middle of the Democratic convention in the last months of what many are saying could be the most important and historic election of our lifetime, that means it's going to be a thrill ride of left-leaning political bloggy goodness. The first stop on the carnival express is the crazy house! In here, Holly from Menstrual Poetry will tell you about how a military court has sentenced a guy who is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for resisting war! That's crazy on so many levels. And if you think that's crazy, just wait until you read what Alan at the Whited Sepulchre has to tell you about this congressional candidate from Memphis. He isn't too fond of the gays or medical marijuana, but it's those Jews that really seem to get him the most riled up. There's a wrestling match going on in the sports arena! In one corner we've got Doctor Biobrain, and in the other corner are libertarians who want to privatize everything. We're all grown ups here and we know that the winners and losers are determined beforehand in these wrestling matches, so you should know that the good doctor will be thoroughly laying the smackdown on those silly libertarians. Before your next stop, it is required that all carnival visitors sit through a presentation by our corporate sponsors. Phil from Phil for Humanity wants to prepare you for the inevitable corporate takeover of everything. I don't know about all of you, but I sure need a drink after hearing about our corporate sponsors. Over in the beer tent, there are a lot of drunken rubes discussing the upcoming election. The drunkest and dumbest of them are making excuses for why they're not voting for Obama and claiming that his race has nothing to do with it, and Red Sonja from The Sword of Freedom is in there calling bullshit on them. But that doesn't stop the drunken rubes from bashing immigrants, so Liesl at Clotted Cognition takes them to task for it. After visiting the beer tent, some of our carnival goers have snuck out behind the hay bales at the livestock exhibit to engage in thrill rides of a more private nature. Birds do it, bees do it, and as Andrew from The Evolving Mind reminds us, even educated trees do it, and the church seems to be more OK with the trees than the birds and the bees. And since sometimes accidents do happen, Ames at A Candid World discusses Obama's stance on abortion. Back on the midway, we've got a large ferris wheel. In one basket is Mudge from Left Handed Compliment, talking about what the democrats need to take America into the future. In the next basket up we've got Madeline of Mad Kane's Political Madness with a limerick about John McCain. And because this is a liberal blog carnival, the main attraction is the political tent. Your carnival host is telling stories about his own experiences at the 2000 Democratic Convention. Jeffrey at Disillusioned Words discusses Obama's choice in running mates. And Alberto at Youth Politics discusses America's role as world police. And that's all folks! The carnival is closed and the carnies are tearing down the rides. Please be sure to catch the next carnival on another blog in two weeks. All the details are here.

Quick Updates

Dear readers, I've been cheating on you. Yeah, I've been neglecting this blog to write on my Open Salon blog. I know, you've all been very good to me and all of a sudden some flashy new readers show up somewhere else and I start paying attention to them and it's not fair fair to you. But I promise to be a better blogger over here. And I'm going to start making it up to you with a few little nuggets. First off, I'm undergoing a new treatment to help manage the ridiculous levels of stress that I get, and so far it's working quite well for me. You can read about it (gulp) on that other blog. And while you're at it, I've got a post over there about the veepstakes as a horrible reality show. Now enough about that other blog. You deserve original content, and dammit, I'm going to give it to you. I've been getting a deluge of entries for the upcoming Carnival of the Liberals which I will be hosting in a week. Now I know why I have been left out of so many of these. There's a lot of really great posts out there. There are also a lot of great posts that just don't exactly fit. And there was even one conservative blogger who is not known for any kind of critical thinking who submitted a 3 year old post that was politically neutral, which could be considered a triumph for him. There's still some time to submit, so keep them coming. And lastly, I've also fallen completely in love. I was with the family at a new Trader Joe's and I saw a music store next door. I walked in for a minute and that's where I saw her. She was standing tall with a slim body and a beautiful neck. I just had to touch her. I stood behind her, plugged her in, turned her on, ran my fingers up and down her and got the most beautiful sounds. Now I'm obsessed. I must have her! Just look at her and tell me she's not the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.

Random Tidbits

Sometimes I wait a long time to come up with something interesting to blog about and then let it percolate until I've figured out my take on it and then lovingly craft it into something interesting for my dear readers (wow, how pretentious and full of myself does that sound?). And sometimes I get a backlog of things that I want to mention here that aren't really worthy of a post of their own. So here's a bit of hit and run blogging. There's amazing bird activity on the bay right outside of my office. There are a ton of white cranes, a pair of white pelicans, an assortment of ducks and one huge blue heron. We may have substandard ventilation here, but the view more than makes up for it. I've been on a Battle of the Blogs losing streak lately. I wonder if it's a fallout from my recent blog drama or just the fickle nature of the voters. In a couple of weeks, I will be hosting an edition of Carnival of the Liberals right here on this blog. If you are a liberal/ progressive/ leftist/ whatever you want to call yourself blogger, have a recent political post that you think might pass my incredibly high standards, and would like the 2 or 3 hits you might get from being included in something like that, please do use the handy dandy web submission form. I've found yet another social networking/blogging site. As if my recent addiction to facebook isn't enough of a time waster, now my favorite progressive news source has started another community for their readers. It's called Open Salon. Right now I'm just cross posting my posts from this blog to my blog over there in an attempt to gain some new readership, but at some point I might do some exclusive content over there. I think it could be a good place for progressive bloggers to network with each other. Sure, there are a multitude of places to do that, but since this one is new (only out of limited beta testing yesterday), it's a little less daunting than trying to get yourself noticed amongst the throngs of Daily Kos bloggers. So far my only complaint is the lack of spell checking in the posting boxes and the lack of RSS. Here's my Open Salon blog. And lastly, I'm really bummed about Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes deaths this weekend. I think I first saw Bernie in Friday and thought he was hysterical, and before I even knew about Shaft, I had seen Isaac in I'm Gonna Git You, Sucka. They were both incredibly talented men and the world is slightly less entertaining without them. And still Dick Cheney's robotic heart continues to beat. Life is not fair.

Blog Drama and the Music of Mass Suicide

I had a bit of blog drama this morning. I created a Battle of the Blogs over on Blog Explosion in the politics category. That means that only other blogs in the politics category can accept the challenge and everybody can vote on it. The blog that took the challenge was most definitely not even remotely a politics blog, and I made a snarky comment about it there. And then I got a tirade about what a horrible human being I am for being sarcastic. I should have left his comments up to illustrate what a whiny and petty little bitch he was being. I don't usually delete comments, but he deleted mine, including my genuine apology for hurting his feelings. That earned me another angry reply over here. Of course, my response to that, in essence telling him to man up and stop being such a drama queen over silly and petty crap, didn't go over too well either and now I'm no longer welcome to comment there which just makes me just want to cry into a cosmo about it with my girlfriends. There will be no link to this incredibly thin skinned and oversensitive blogger, but Matt, if you're reading this while voting against me in another blog battle, don't forget to change your tampon. And speaking of bloody things (OMG, did I really just segue with that? Somebody slap me!)... the WMFU blog has posted MP3's of the People's Temple gospel album. They posted it 2 years ago, but I just read about it today over at Metafilter. They recorded the album five years before Jim Jones talked 900 or so of them into committing mass suicide at his Jonestown compound in Guyana. And if that's not enough music from murderous cult leaders for you, did you know that Charles Manson released an album of new material just recently under a creative commons license (also found in that metafilter thread)?

It's Official, I'm a Carny!

That's right, I've officially joined a carnival. But I won't be trying to separate marks from their money with rigged games, dangerous rides and bad fried foods because it's not that kind of carnival. No, this is a blog carnival, the Carnival of the Liberals to be exact. I've been entering my posts for consideration in this blog carnival since it started a couple years ago, and I've finally gotten into one with my last post (though I did make honorable mention once)! After many weeks of rejection, I thought that the only way for me to get in with the best and brightest of lefty bloggers was to host the carnival myself (which I will be doing on Aug 27th), so how excited was I to see a link in the most recent carnival? I feel like the freakin' homecoming queen! You can find me in the Rights and Responsibilities section along with another excellent post on the same subject.

The Lexicon of This Blog

While his inspiration couldn't come from a lamer source, I kind of like the idea that JSF had of posting an explanation of who or what you might see mentioned on his blog. I liked the idea so much that I blatantly ripped it off did the same thing here. So here is the lexicon of Washington Interns Gone Bad in alphabettical order... Anne - My sweet and beautiful wife who is dreadfully embarrassed by the sometimes angry tone and sometimes colorful language on this blog, yet for some reason tolerates me anyway. Artie Lange - My favorite comedian/personal trainwreck. See also: Howard Stern, Baba Booey Asshat - Kind of like an asshole, only more laughable. See also: douchebag Asshattery - The behavior of an asshat, or asshat-like behavior from a person who might not ordinarily be considered an asshat. See also: douchebaggery Baba Booey - A nickname of Howard Stern's producer, Gary Dell'Abate, but the name has taken on a life of its own as a prank code word for Stern fans. There's always a challenge to get that name on the air of mainstream broadcasts, such as walking past a live newscast on the street and shouting "Baba Booey" at the top of your lungs hoping it makes it on the air. See also: Artie Lange, Howard Stern Battle of the Blogs - A popularity contest on Blog Explosion. You go up against another blog and 15 people decide which one is better. So far I have a decent margin of wins to losses. There are some blogs that I don't mind losing to, and some losses that make me feel like jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. See also: Blog Explosion Battlestar Galactica - The best frakkin' show on the frakkin' TV, period. No, not the cheesy 70's one with Lorne Green and Face from the A-Team. The new one with Edward James Olmos and a real budget. Blog Explosion - A blog networking site which I haven't decided if I love or hate. See also: Battle of the Blogs Bush-Cheney Crime Family - Some of you might know them as the current US President and his administration, but to me they're more like members of organized crime than members of government and hopefully some day they will be tried as such. See also: Worst Administration Ever, douchebaggery Douchebag - Kind of like an asshat, only less laughable and more vile. See also: Asshat, Dick Cheney Douchebaggery - The behavior of an douchebag, or douche-like behavior from a person who might not ordinarily be considered a douchebag. See also: asshattery, worst administration ever Evil of Two Lessers - The Republican Party. Do both parties suck? Oh yeah! But do the republicans suck in a particularly evil kind of way? Usually, though sometimes they'll surprise you. See also: Lesser of two evils Howard - All Hail the King of All Media! When Howard Stern started getting really big in the early 90's, I was an obnoxiously PC college student who thought he was horrible and ugly. Over a decade later he's still pretty ugly, but I was long over that PC bullshit and had to drive 45 minutes to work and I started listening. Now I'm obsessed and mention him fairly often on this blog. See also: Artie Lange, Baba Booey JSF - A friend of mine who happens to be a conservative blogger. Despite being wrong on many political issues and using mind bogglingly poor logic and straw man arguments to try to bolster his points, he's a good dude and we sometimes even manage to see eye to eye on some things. We're both transplanted New Yorkers in California by way of Washington, DC. Lesser of Two Evils - The Democratic Party. Do they suck? You bet! Do they suck slightly less than the republicans? Usually, though sometimes they surprise you. See also: Evil of two lessers Opeth - An amazing Swedish prog-metal band who I am completely obsessed with at the moment. See also: Prog Opiate of the Masses - Religion. Just like drugs, in the right hands it can be inspiring yet in the wrong hands it can cause endless misery, irrationality, oppression, violence and other not so nice things. Keep it out of my face and I typically don't have too much of a problem with it. Prog - Progressive rock. This has nothing at all to do with progressive politics. It's the musical genre which I am really into at the moment. There are many sub-genres and a wide range of bands. I am currently looking to start playing in a prog band of some sort or another. See also: Opeth Stella - My adorable little monkey child who will eventually grow up to be incredibly embarrassed by her daddy's blogging, burping, and all that weird music he listens to. Washington Interns Gone Bad - Yes, that's the title of this blog, but before there was the blog, there was the movie. The blog started as a production diary for the movie. The movie was my reaction to living in Washington, DC and working in and around national partisan politics. Let's just say it doesn't paint a pretty picture of the political scene. You can watch it for free, broken down into 11 episodes on the top of the left hand column of this blog. Worst Administration Ever - The Bush administration. Need I say more? See also: Bush-Cheney crime family, douchebaggery

Getting Real About Bipartisanship

Today I have the honor of being a guest blogger on a conservative blog, The BoBo Files. BoBo has a feature called Liberal Blogger Friday, where he invites a liberal blogger to post. When I saw his call for this week, I jumped at the chance. While I enjoy being a sarcastic critic of the right on this blog, I wanted to use the opportunity to reach out to the other side and see if I couldn't find some common ground. While the idea of walking into potentially hostile territory and going for pure shock value appeals to the part of me that made the angry political comedy film that you can watch in the top left column of this blog, I just gave JSF a really hard time about his two posts on "bipartisanship" and wanted to show him that the spirit of bipartisanship is about seeking common ground, not making unrealistic demands of the other guys. So what are you waiting for? Go read my post already! UPDATE 5/11/08 - Well apparently, most readers of that blog liked the idea of bipartisanship, but once the rubber hit the road they weren't so crazy about actually hearing another perspective without calling it bullshit and making snide remarks and making zero attempt toward working anything out. Gee, so much for listening to each other and trying to make a compromise. Like my failed attempt at holding a summit between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian bloggers, this was a lofty idea that just didn't work and left me feeling sad for the world.

Free Music, a Quiz and a Meme

It's amazing how prolific Trent Reznor has become since parting ways with his record label. Just a couple of months ago he released Ghosts for $5 online, today there's another album and it's completely free as long as you're willing to give him your email address. Like Ghosts, it's released under a creative commons license. I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, but Trent's mission to change the face of the music business has made me more interested in his newer music than I might have otherwise been. And now, the quiz. See if you can tell the difference between Bush and McCain. And lastly, I've been tagged by JSF to the 1-2-3 meme. Here's the deal... * Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages). * Open the book to page 123. * Find the fifth sentence. * Post the next three sentences. * Tag five people OK folks, get ready for the word of "Bob" Most people will spend the first couple of weeks materializing huge feasts, piles of money, pots of gold and lakes of liquor. There will be no limitations; the many disgruntled Pinks who will envision H-bombs with which to destroy themselves and the surrounding 500 square miles will find their intentions stymied. MWOWM will be diplomatic as "gods" go. You know you want to read more of that! My policy on memes is that continuing it from here is on a voluntary basis. Please feel free to tag yourself, and if you do, please let me know in the comments.

The Poli-Scifi Meme Dies Here!

JSF has tagged me for this meme and I considered blowing it off given that homeboy hasn't made a comment on one of my political posts in ages while I usually tend to comment on his. But since I am a good sport, here goes... 1) President George W. Bush or President William Clinton? You must answer 1a and 1b. None of the above 1a) Give 3 issues why you support your guy: Neither is my guy, I support neither. Though I prefer Clinton because: A) His lie about sex didn't get us into a war B) His scandals were never potential acts of treason C) Jobs were easier to come by when he was running things and America wasn't a laughingstock as it has been under Bush. 1b) Now name 3 things good about the other guy. There is really nothing good to say about our worst president ever. But here are three silver linings to this 8 year dark cloud... A) Most of us are all still alive. B) Not all of our constitutional rights have been flushed down the toilet. C) His failures are an albatross around the neck of the republican party for decades to come. 2) Favorite Sci-fi movie? How could I possibly pick a favorite? Does Donnie Darko count as scifi? 3) Favorite Sci-fi TV show? Heroes 4) Favorite Alternate History story (movie, TV or book)? The Illuminatus Trilogy 5) Best American Legislator? (if overseas, your local Legislators) Politicians are the scum of the earth. But just because it would raise the hackles of the right, Cynthia McKinney. 6) Best Foreign Legislator? (if overseas, this is where you can choose American legislators) See number 5 and to piss off the right again, Hugo Chavez (though I do not like authoritarians on the left or right). 7) Favorite Sci-fi scene? (Youtube it if you can) 8) Pitch a cross-over between two sci-fi shows/movies/etc.: Dr. Suresh hires Mulder and Skully to help him hunt down Sylar. 9) Who will win the Democratic Presidential Primary? Why? Right now it's a toss up. I'm still rooting for Obama, but Hillary has plenty more dirty tricks up her sleeve. Please let it be Obama! 10) Will Gordon Brown call an election before 2010? To quote the great Casey Casem "These guys are from England and who gives a shit?" I'm sure the English give a shit, but I really couldn't care less. 11) Favorite Steampunk, Cyberpunk or Post-Cyberpunk novel, comic, book or movie? The Baroque Cycle 12) Best Pizza place? Please provide the link. Out here, it's got to be Lanesplitter. I'm supposed to tag 5 people, but nobody I ever tag is as sportsmanlike about this as I am. So if you volunteer to be tagged, let me know in the comments.

What is Wrong With Corporate Media?

I guess one should rather be asking what is right with it? The crap that is passing for "journalism" today is an absolute joke. Chez Pazienza was fired from his job as a producer at CNN for having a blog and an opinion. He has since fired off a lengthy screed about the state of the media industry that is a must-read. Here's a small taste, but do yourself a favor and spend 10 minutes reading the whole thing. During my last couple of years as a television news producer, I watched the networks try to recover from a six year failure to bring truth to power (the political party in power being irrelevant incidentally; the job of the press is to maintain an adversarial relationship with the government at all times) and what's worse, to pretend that they had a backbone all along. I watched my bosses literally stand in the middle of the newsroom and ask, "What can we do to not lead with Iraq?" -- the reason being that Iraq, although an important story, wasn't always a surefire ratings draw. I was asked to complete self-evaluations which pressed me to describe the ways in which I'd "increased shareholder value." (For the record, if you're a rank-and-file member of a newsroom, you should never under any circumstances even hear the word "shareholders," let alone be reminded that you're beholden to them.) I watched the media in general do anything within reason to scare the hell out of the American public -- to convince people that they were about to be infected by the bird flu, poisoned by the food supply, or eaten by sharks. I marveled at our elevation of the death of Anna Nicole Smith to near-mythic status and our willingness to let the airwaves be taken hostage by every permutation of opportunistic degenerate from a crying judge to a Hollywood hanger-on with an emo haircut. I watched qualified, passionate people worked nearly to death while mindless talking heads were coddled. I listened to Lou Dobbs play the loud-mouthed fascist demagogue, Nancy Grace fake ratings-baiting indignation, and Glenn Beck essentially do nightly stand-up -- and that's not even taking into account the 24/7 Vaudeville act over at Fox News. I watched The Daily Show laugh not at our mistakes but at our intentional absurdity.

Just Nod if You Can Hear Me

In the heyday of this blog, I was getting upwards of 100 hits a day from actual readers. Now when I look at my web stats it makes me feel like I'm just some crazy dude yelling in a bullhorn on the street corner who people walk by pretending not to see. But I do enjoy some of the search engine strings that get people here. There's the ever popular searches for Kelly Tripplehorn, the obnoxious young evangelical guy who will never live down an embarrassing breakup email he sent to a girl when he was a congressional intern. I thought it was funny when he was just some disgraced republican intern, but now that he's spewing pseudo-intellectual nonsense for the lunatic fringe of Christianity (and since he blocked me on YouTube when I posted part of his email as a comment to one of his dumb videos) it brings a smile to my face that people googling him find out exactly what a tool he is. In the same vein, I really enjoy the fact that I am the number two search result for "Joe Lieberman Douche!" No, the democrat independent republican senator from Connecticut has not started his own line of kosher feminine hygiene products, but the Senate would be a slightly better place if he switched careers to that. If you want to have some angry laughs, I suggest you read some of the other links on that page. So what's coming next? Stupid Tuesday is in a couple of days which to a political junkie like me is bigger than the Superbowl (I don't care much about sports at all, but as a NYer in exile, I'm pretty happy about the Giants win). The democratic side is still too close to call but I'm rooting for Obama. On the republican side, I think I'm hoping for a Romney win since he would fare far worse in the general election than McCain. As always, JSF and myself will be providing our left-right coverage to all 3 of you people reading.

Up To No Good

As I've been mentioning lately, I'm starting to phase out this blog and start a new one. For one, the brand name of Washington Interns Gone Bad is getting a bit on the stale side. If you make a no-budget feature length comedy film and nothing really comes of it for 6 years other than perpetual rumors of an impending lawsuit by one of your actresses for a different ridiculous reason every month, it's time to hang it up and move onward to bigger and better things. I also don't find much of a challenge in writing the same old snarky political stuff. Yeah, the system still sucks and most people involved in it are still a bunch of unsavory slimeballs, but how much more mileage can I really get out of that? I get tired of reading that kind of stuff from others, so it makes sense that my uninspired angry rants are not getting the kind of readership that I thought they should. So I've started up something new. Drum roll please... It's called Villainy, Inc. The concept is that all of the various annoyances in life have driven me to pursue a career as a super villain. I know, it sounds like an incredibly dorky idea, but bear with me please. Stepping into a comic book character and writing from that perspective will be a much needed breath of fresh air. It offers the perfect framework for me to be even more sarcastic and self deprecating as I am on this blog and in real life while using the excuse of "writing in character" as a way of being able to say more outrageous things than I could ever get away with here as just plain old regular me. I'll still post here from time to time, but the bulk of my blogging activity will be at Villainy, Inc.

My Agenda for 2008

This is less a bunch of new years resolutions and more a to-do list for the year. Transition Blog - I'm a little bit tired of this blog. Nothing ever became of the movie Washington Interns Gone Bad. It was a fun and lofty project 6 years ago. The fact that a bunch of DC political activists actually made a feature length comedy film lampooning post 9/11 life in the world of national politics is quite an achievement, but as it was a first project by people who knew next to nothing about filmmaking, it really doesn't grab much of an audience outside of those of us who actually took part in it and the circles of friends and fellow activists who came from that specific time and place. There's really no point in continually trying to milk that dead horse. The fact that one of my cast members is still so obsessed with this film that she talks about suing me about every six months for a stake in something that has lost money (but hey, if you want a stake in a loser, I accept paypal) has really soured me on the whole thing. So the plan is to pretty much just phase this blog out and start a whole new one, this time using WordPress and having a whole new theme that will challenge me to write more creatively than the usual complaints about our lame political system. Be on the lookout in the next few weeks. Make More Money - This one pretty much ought to speak for itself. I'd like to be able to make some extra income doing videography, but I also wouldn't mind really kicking up the ad revenues from blogging. That ain't working. That's the way you do it. Stick it to the Man - Also fairly self explanatory. The Man has been keeping us down long enough and every creative thing that I do in this next year should in some way be part of sticking it to him. Do More Creative Projects - This year I will do more creative writing, more filmmaking, and perhaps even try to make some music again.

Farynghoula Mutating Meme

I've been tagged by Tangled Up in Blue Guy for a blog meme. I only do these every now and then, but this one intrigues me because it's not just the usual list of things. This one is a study of genetics and mutations that took me about three reads to understand (I'm a little bit slow today - but it eventually made sense to me). Here are the instructions: There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”. Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations: * You can leave them exactly as is. * You can delete any one question. * You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…” to “The best time travel novel in Westerns is…”, or “The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…”, or “The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…”. * You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”. * You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable. Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions. Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them. OK, got that? Yeah, I know. Read it again. Tangled Up in Blue Guy’s nucleotides are in orange, any novel mutations are in blue. Now here it is: The best romantic movie in SF/Fantasy is: The Princess Bride The best hip hop song from speed metal is: “I'm the Man” by Anthrax The most disturbing movie in Independent Film is: Jesus Camp The best anti-war song in Working-Class Folk Music is: “It's All About the Price of Oil” by Billy Bragg. The trashiest reality show on cable TV is : Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. My genealogy is: My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Pharyngula. My great-great-great-great grandparents are The Flying Trilobite and Metamagician and the Hellfire Club. My great-great-great-grandparents are Flying Trilobite and Leslie’s Blog. My great-great-grandparents are A Blog Around the Clock and The Meming of Life. My great-grandparents are From Archaea to Zeaxanthol and The Primate Diaries. My old granddad is The Other 95%. My pater in this meme is Tangled Up in Blue Guy. OK, now the hard part: choosing people to tag with this who might actually keep it going. JSF Scoobie Davis and last but not least, Fox News Channel's very own: Bill O'Reilly!

So Much to Do, So Little Time

There are lots of things I'd really like to be commenting on if only I had the time. Some college kid got tazered by the cops at a John Kerry Q&A. The ACLU is defending Larry Craig. There's the polygamist trial happening in Utah just in time to feed my polygamy fix while waiting for another season of Big Love (is it a coincidence that the character of Albee Grant looks quite a bit like Warren Jeffs?). And OJ freakin' Simpson is in trouble again! But I don't have time to make snarky comments about any of this stuff because I'm up to my eyeballs catching up with work (my workplace falls to pieces when I'm not there) and trying to convert my vast blog empire over to WordPress (I'm starting with Stella's Blog and not having a terrifically easy time with it so far.). I've also got a ton of pictures and video from our vacation that I ought to be posting, though I'm contemplating holding off on that until I can get the blogs converted. And as if that isn't enough, I'm trying to set up a webcam so my mom can see her granddaughter more often and everything seems to be working except for the sound.

Out with the old...

So today I was trying to post something silly and blogger wouldn't publish to my server. So I went to complain for like the millionth time to my cheesy web host. When I log into my control panel, there is no functionality and a notice that my hosting is suspended until I pay for another year of hosting. This is the first I am hearing of this from them. No email warning me that I have a week to pay before my hosting gets suspended. So I submit a very sarcastic trouble ticket telling them how nice it would have been to have gotten a little heads up. They replied basically saying that I'd be un-suspended once I paid. I told them not to bother and I signed on with a newer and better host. The timing of this could not have been worse. Tomorrow we fly to New York for my cousin's wedding. I've got to be packing instead of trying to migrate my entire website to a new server. I did everything I could from my office which was basically just changing my DNS settings and creating a few directories. Once home, I set up the migration in Dreamweaver and hit the upload button right before taking Stella for our daily after-work playground excursion (she met a pair of brothers who just moved to town and even got into a toy lightsaber battle with one of them - the force is strong with this one! She also saw 3 month old twins, pointed and said "baby.") It was still uploading when I got home. Then I had to change my publishing settings in blogger and republish all 4 blogs. That took a long time, mostly on this blog with 5 years worth of posts. I think I may have lost some images that I uploaded through blogger in the last 6 months, but that's probably the only real glitch. It was all rather painless. So with this new hosting package, I'm going to be able to do a lot of neat stuff. The first thing is going to be an attempt to convert all of the blogs over to Word Press. I'm very excited about that, though a whole new blogging system is going to be a lot to get used to. I'm also going to re-launch my wedding videography site with some cool new features as I gear up to get some wedding gigs. I now have a lot more space, bandwidth and new technologies available to play with. I probably won't be blogging much from NY, so don't expect regular postings to resume until after the 17th. Just off the heels of another trip home for my grandmother's funeral, this will be a much happier affair. It's our first attempt at taking Stella on an airplane, and for many members of my family this will be their first time meeting her. It will also be my first wedding shoot with DVX. If I do it right then I get good demo material and my cousin gets a great indie film quality wedding video.

Survivor: Outwit - Outwrite - Outblog

Twenty One Bloggers are left in a remote corner of the blogosphere for four weeks, only given one word each week about which to write a post. One person goes home with the prize while the others are left with about 14 more minutes of quasi blog fame. Unlike the TV show, this blog version actually contributes something good to the world. It's raising money for breast cancer research (see below). In week one, the word is, you guessed it... extra long reality TV style pause with dramatic music and closeup shots of the contestants' faces with apprehensive looks... "Survivor." A word like that can evoke many things, mostly deeply personal stories of inspiration and perseverance that tug at the heartstrings. If anyone has ever come to this blog looking for that sort of thing, they've come to the wrong place. The first thing that popped into my head when I opened the email that had this week's word were the opening guitar riffs of "Eye of the Tiger," by of course, Survivor. The second thing I thought of was that horrible TV show that forever changed the definition of "Reality." And being the pop-culture obsessed wackjob that I am, I kept going along that route. I'm in this contest to win it. Sure, it's a great writing challenge with a good cause and an opportunity to get some new readers, but you don't get yourself into a contest to come in second place. How have some of TV's Survivors played the game? What would Richard Hatch do? As much as I'd like to unnerve my opponents, the idea of posting naked pictures of my fat hairy ass on this blog don't seem like a good strategy. But then again, he did win. But I think a promise to not post naked pictures would get me more votes. What would Johnny Fairplay do? Being obnoxious is not a problem, but concocting a story about a dead grandmother to get sympathy was brilliant villain stunt that still did not win him the contest. What would Rupert do: Rupert was such a lovable hippie that even though he lost twice the producers gave him a million dollars. That would never work for me because I just don't think that likability is part of my blogging style. So what should be my strategy for being the ultimate Blog-Off Survivor? I guess I'm just going to have to write the hell out of some blog posts and try to be as entertaining as possible. Though I am willing to discuss the idea of a voting bloc with fellow blogoffers, only to double cross them in the end which always works out great for all involved. * * * * Check out the other Blog-off bloggers and make a pledge for Courtney's 3 Day walk

This is Cool!

Suppose you've got a blog and you want to post a file. Maybe it's a song or a video clip, and you're either on one of these free blog hosts that won't let you host files, or you just don't want to get your bandwidth slammed. Or suppose you want to email a file to your friends or colleagues but your email or their email won't handle attachments over 5 or 10 megs. Check out Driveway - Online File Sharing to work around these problems. Host files up to 500mb each! Email or blog the links to your files. You don't even have to register with their site to do it. They're even developing new features to roll out soon like password protection and folder uploads. DISCLOSURE: This post is sponsored by Driveway.com

We Have a Winner!

Winners, actually. A while ago, I had a contest for people to win a Washington Interns Gone Bad DVD. All people had to do was leave a comment to enter this contest. I had no idea just how hard it is to try to give something away. I got a whole two entries. While Billy Jacks' story of work on a Kevin Smith film gives him a definite edge, JSF has lived the Washington political staffer life that is lampooned in this film. So since they actually took the initiative to enter, they both win. And I'll give away one more copy to the first person to leave a comment on this post. Winners should get in touch with me and give me a mailing address.

I've Been Tagged!

I've been tagged by JSF to answer some questions. I don't usually do these things, but it's a nice break from politics (with the exception of the political questions) and writing paid posts. 1) Name your favorite band and singer. (The singer can't be from the band) Band: Radiohead Singer: Nick Cave 2) Favorite historical politician (domestic)? (Historical = Dead) Franklin Roosevelt - I couldn't have picked a better president to share a home town with. 3) Favorite historical politician (International)? Shit, I don't know. I'll say Margaret Thatcher just because of all the great British punk rock songs that came as a reaction to her right wing policies. 4) You're giving a Hollywood pitch (25 words or less) about your Blog -- GO: The West Wing meets Pink Flamingos 5) Other then where you live now, what city do you like? Washington, DC 6) Favorite modern politician? (In office now) The quickest path to my disdain and disrespect is to currently hold a national office. But Dennis Kucinich seems pretty cool. 7) Are you a Wilsonian Idealist or Nixonian Realist in foreign policy? I'm a Jasonian sick of it all-ist 8) Favorite obscure movie? Tromeo and Juliet 9) What is your favorite restaurant? Biasom Thai in San Francisco 10) Choose a music video on YouTube. Why that one? If you have to ask why this one, you'll never know. OK, time to pass this through the blogosphere like chlamydia through a college dorm. I tag the following bloggers to answer these same questions and then pass it on: Billy Jacks Techy Stuff Snoop Dad Bill O'Reilly

Googl'd

When it comes to building and maintaining websites, I tend to enjoy the creative aspects such as design and writing. The part that I have always found to be most challenging has been search optimization. There are different search engines which rise and fall in importance and each one has a different way of listing your site and if having a good spot in searches is important to you, you've either got to be an expert in search or be ready to consult with one. If you're going to attempt to take on this endeavor yourself, there are plenty of places to read up on the subject, and one of those is Apogee's Search Marketing Blog. Companies like Apogee are experts on all things search engine related so you can focus on the creative end of things. Their job is to get their clients where they need to be in the search engines using Ethical SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because if you abuse the system you run the risk of geek wrath and you really don't want that. Now if only I could talk my boss into hiring a company like this instead of just asking me to figure it out. DISCLOSURE: This post has been sponsored by Apogee Search Marketing.